The present invention pertains to the area of chemical analysis by chromatography. Specifically, the chemical analysis is in the field of liquid chromatography, more specifically ion chromatography and most specifically gradient ion chromatography. Quantitative gradient ion chromatography is known to be a difficult field of analysis because of baseline drift problems encountered from increasing, as a function of time, the ionic strength of the mobile phase. The ionic strength of the mobile phase may be increased by either increasing the concentration of the electrolyte (i.e. the displacing ion) being used, or by switching over to an electrolytic element having a higher ionic strength, or both. If baseline drift is permitted, accurate quantitative analysis of the amounts of late-eluting species is not possible The present invention pertains to a specific means of elimination of baseline drift, thereby permitting gradient ion chromatography to be useful for the quantitative comparison of sample components which vary widely in affinity for the stationary phase within the column.